October 7, 2011 at 9:18 am
Does anyone know of a handy product that would help me develop an easy to follow graphical representation of a complex query that would then help a non-technical person understand the calculations and relationships involved in the query?
October 7, 2011 at 10:12 am
I have found that visio is a decent tool for this. You just have to break down the query to logical steps instead of all at once like sql does. The big question for me really is why does a non-technical person need a detailed understanding of a query???
_______________________________________________________________
Need help? Help us help you.
Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.
Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/
October 7, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Thanks, I'll give Visio a try.
To answer your question, for complex data requests, I think non-technical end-users sometime need an in-depth understanding of the data and the query in order to confirm that what they need and what I provide them are indeed one and the same. Sometimes, they don't know what they want, and sometimes I think I understand what they want, when I don't really. I find that by communicating these details on the front end, I return to the drawing board less often.
October 10, 2011 at 7:07 am
Of course there is nothing automatic about Visio. It isn't like you can put in a query and it will generate a nice UI. It can be very challenging sometimes to present the very complex business rules for reports. When putting this type of thing together for non-technical people I tend to mentally turn the query into a flowchart full of "if this then that" type of flow. It is not an accurate flow per se but it does get the general idea across fairly well.
_______________________________________________________________
Need help? Help us help you.
Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.
Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/
Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply